He was a figure so powerful that prime ministers shamelessly wooed him. But yesterday, he was reduced to a tired, sad old man as he sat before a committee of interrogators.
The aura had gone. He was a hesitant, apologetic, and humbled shadow of his former self.
Rupert Murdoch does not deserve any sympathy for the position in which he finds himself. His fortune has been built on a hard-nosed approach to news and exposing wrong-doing. Had it been a politician or a celebrity at the centre of such a controversy, he would not have blinked as his news hounds went for the jugular.
A foam pie attack by an anarchist provided a dramatic distraction from the grilling, leaving enormous question marks over security.
But froth apart, the general theme of the Murdoch's defence was that they couldn't be expected to micro-manage a global business to the extent that they could possibly have known phone-hacking had become part of the culture.
"I have no knowledge of that," was a line frequently repeated.
Whatever conclusions are produced by the phone-hacking inquiries, the media empire created by Rupert Murdoch will be forever damaged not just by the phone-hackers but by an appalling and shocking lack of management by senior executives.
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